To ask for support and tips on not backing down? It's a work-related skirmish.

[FortunesFave]

Long story short, I'm a freelance copywriter. I work with many businesses and agencies.

I've been freelance for 12 years. I'm very good at what I do.

One agency has recently brought in a new SEO expert. She's great at her job...really good. But as soon as she began, she was leaving notes on our Slack channel about my copy.

"Lovely work...the SEO is good but I added more commas"

Upon reviewing her additions, they were all incorrect.

I had to spend time removing them. She also deleted a word and changed it for her own choice. Badly.

She's German and English is not her first language. So the word she deleted has different connotations in German.

Now she's just reviewed my most recent article and added new spacing...fine....but the owner of the agency...who knows that I was annoyed about the commas previously, butted in and said "Please don't alter Fortune's copy."

He later messaged me to say the SEO expert was not happy with him saying this to her and he's going to allow her to make changes to my work!

I'm NOT HAPPY. I have told him this...and I have intimated I won't be working under her. She's NOT an editor and doesn't know how to use commas so my work will be compromised. I can't share work that's shit...I can't repeatedly go back in and check her "editing" to make sure it's good...because it won't be.

He hasn't got back to me yet...he's probably stewing and panicking because he values us both.

I honestly am a little offended. He's cow-towed to her ego here and to the detriment of the work I turn in. Help me deal please!

Part of me is stomach churningly anxious because this is a good client....the other part of me is outraged. Any tips on not backing down please?

Well done for standing your ground, OP. I need to learn to be more like you.

@FortunesFave

I realise Velour is trying to accuse me of being a sock puppeteer so I will report her comments and MNHQ can vouch that I have not.

Sorry this is a bit late in the day, but we just wanted to confirm that we've no evidence of any sock puppeting on this thread.

Please always report any concerns to us so we can check things out behind the scenes - it's what we're here for.

How did the conversation go today @FortunesFave?

I’m an SEO specialist and a copywriter. Adding commas etc has fuck all SEO value. However potentially she could be doing a couple of things and would be right

• restructuring the blog piece
• making the language more simple (I personally think this is useless but if she’s using a “scoring” type app like Yoast or SEMrush it might suggest that the sentences are too complex).
• adding semantic keywords

However you’ve said that your “name” is attached to this work. That’s actually quite unusual - this type of stuff if usually ghost written.

I totally feel your pain though and have got rid of clients for similar reasons - though usually it’s more that I’ve written something that’s good, and well optimised and they think it’s a good idea to add their keyword 50 times to it - or a totally random sales pitch!

Watching with interest.

How did it go?

I’m not a copywriter but I worked in publishing for a few years and do some freelance editing so I know how to use commas! In my current job a more senior member of staff always changes any reports/letters I write to include loads of incorrect commas. It’s SO annoying! So many people have no clue how to use them. This sounds very frustrating OP, I hope it gets sorted.

God that sounds so annoying! Hopefully, she will butt out - commas are not SEO!